Darling Buds, Keeley – The Thunderbolt, Bristol

I think I forgot how far Bristol was when I booked this. (Actually it wasn’t bad. 2 hrs 45 mins going on a Saturday afternoon, 2 hrs 25 mins coming home on a Sunday morning).

That wasn’t quite true too – The Darling Buds are playing in London in November, and I make a point of going to every “local” Darling Buds gig. Except I can’t go to this one, so I decided to go to the only other gig they’ve announced for 2023, which was this one.

I booked it some months ago and looked at hotel prices a couple of weeks ago. Nothing less than £160 a night! I was going to give it a miss, but then I found an Airbnb available for £49, so I decided to go for it after all. The Airbnb was 1 1/2 miles from the venue, so I decided to walk the 30 minutes to the venue. Drizzle turned into proper rain, so I ended up decamping first to the Southside Bar, and a couple of pints of Asahi dried me out.

I got to the Thunderbolt in time to catch Keeley’s set. Keeley had been a visitor to our radio station yesterday and I came along for the session, and here we are 24 hours later, 160 miles away! It was a great set – her songs really jumped to life on stage. Hard to believe it’s only her 5th gig ever.

The Darling Buds are starting to creep more and more new songs into their set, with good reason – I have it on good authority that a new album is getting closer. It will be the first since 1992’s Erotica; with terrible record company timing, an album released at the same time as Madonna’s album of the same name. The Darling Buds’ one is much better though!